1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for tracking the viewing of advertisements on a home entertainment system. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a method for tracking the viewing of an advertisement by recognizing an identifying marker that has been placed in the advertisement or otherwise recognizing that a tuner in the home entertainment system has tuned to a channel that is carrying the advertisement.
2. The Prior State of the Art
Historically, television has been a source of entertainment for the general public and a medium through which an enormous number of individuals can be reached. Businesses recognize the value of this medium and take advantage of it by annually investing billions of dollars into the purchase of airtime for television programs and commercials.
Because the financial investment into television is so enormous, specific information as to what the public is viewing on television is a valuable commodity. The knowledge of information such as the audience share of television programs allows for the development of marketing and advertising schemes, program schedules, price rates for airtime, retention or termination of television programs, and the creation of new programs desired by the public.
The audience share watching television programs is particularly valuable to advertisers. Advertisers target audiences by airing their advertisements at a time when the types of customers that would be most interested in their product or service would be viewing the television. Indeed, a primary use for viewing behavior information is to set advertising rates based on the number of advertisement exposures that advertisers can expect on particular television programs.
The methods that have been employed to gather information on viewer behavior associated with television programs have been extremely limited as to the amount and type of information that is gathered and have not tracked advertisements viewed. By way of example, members of the viewing public can be paid to record in logbooks the television channels they watch during a sample period of time and then mail the logbooks to a central location after the completion of the sample period. At the central location, the channels watched and recorded in the logbooks are manually entered into a database and processed centrally to obtain usable data that represents television programs viewed.
The volume of information that can be obtained according to this technique is inherently limited because viewers are generally not willing to invest large portions of time to register an abundance of information in logbooks. Therefore, it would be impractical to request viewers to log every advertisement they view into a logbook. Further, a viewer""s desire to quickly complete the registering of information and the existence of mistakes in the registering process introduces human error into the data sample. The manual nature of this approach coupled with the non-electronic form of the data make it inefficient for use with automated and computer-based forms of data processing.
Another method for tracking the viewing of television programs involves installing devices in the homes of viewers to monitor and record the channels tuned during a sample period. Each viewer of a household is assigned a symbol recognizable to the device and is responsible to select that symbol to indicate that he or she is watching the television. From time to time the device flashes a red light to remind the viewers to select their corresponding symbol. The viewing information, including the channels and the viewing date and time recorded by the devices, is transmitted to a central location. The viewing information is converted into a usable form at the central location by, for example, converting data that identifies the channel to data representing the corresponding television program. This conversion process can involve a significant amount of data processing, because the television programming that is broadcast on a given channel at a specified time can vary from locality to locality. Furthermore, this method relies on a broadcaster encoding each program for detection by the device and is therefore inappropriate for tracking less popular, locally produced, or exclusively cable-based programming. Therefore, this method is also undesirably limited in the amount and type of viewing information that is obtained since it only returns the channels, the viewing date and the time recorded by the devices.
Using any of the foregoing techniques, advertisers have had to simply infer advertisement viewing based on viewing of television programs (i.e., sitcoms or news programs) that have advertisements included therein. None of the foregoing techniques can determine whether viewers have changed channels during, or prior to, advertisements, or whether a particular advertisement has actually been broadcast as expected by a local broadcaster.
It would, therefore, be an advancement in the art to generate specific advertisement viewing behavior information. Such information would be particularly useful if it could be readily adapted to advertisements aired on a variety of television programming, such as local programming, network programming, cable programming, or satellite programming. It would be a further advancement in the art to obtain information relating to the use of interactive features by a viewer while watching television programming that carries an advertisement. Furthermore, it would be desirable to track and measure channel surfing or other similar viewer behavior of viewers in response to advertisements. There is also a need for techniques to enable advertisers to verify that advertisements have been broadcast as expected by local broadcasters.
The present invention is directed to a system and method for tracking advertisement viewing behavior aired by a home entertainment system and overcomes the above-mentioned difficulties by being fully automated and providing information regarding viewer behavior of advertisements displayed by a home entertainment system. A processing device associated with the home entertainment system determines that a particular advertisement, rather than merely a television program, is being displayed. In response, viewing behavior information describing or representing the viewing of the advertisement is generated and stored. The viewing behavior information is transported to a remote location on a periodic basis.
Implementation of the present invention may take place in application specific set-top boxes, cable or satellite boxes, Internet set-top boxes, television sets, personal computers, or any other device that is included in a home entertainment system which has a tuner, a network connection to transmit information to a central server, and data storage and processing capabilities to perform the operations disclosed herein.
One technique whereby the processing device recognizes an advertisement utilizes markers encoded in the vertical blanking interval (xe2x80x9cVBIxe2x80x9d) or the overscan region of the television signal that carries the advertisement. The act of a home entertainment system recognizing the marker as it is received on a tuned channel indicates that the advertisement was viewed on that home entertainment system. This event is then coupled with specific information to the advertisement aired, such as the date and time of the advertisement or the channel or television programming associated with the advertisement. This information can be retrieved, for instance, from an electronic program guide.
In an alternative approach encompassed by the invention, a conventional electronic program guide is supplemented with information identifying the advertisements included in the television programming and the time when they are to be broadcast. The processing device associated with the home entertainment system monitors the electronic program guide and the tuned channel, thereby identifying advertisements that are being displayed at the home entertainment system. In response, viewing behavior information describing the viewed advertisements can be generated, stored, and periodically transmitted to a central or remote location. Using the electronic program guide, or one or more databases located at a central clearinghouse, any supplemental information regarding the advertisement or the associated television programming can be included in the viewing behavior information. The date and time that the events are performed can also be monitored and recorded. An electronic device in which the methods of the invention are implemented can be preprogrammed with the current time, date, time zone, week number, and day of the week. Accordingly, detailed viewing behavior, such as whether the viewer encountered the advertisement during channel surfing or whether the viewer changed the channel in response to the advertisement, can be monitored and recorded.
The foregoing process of tracking, storing, and transmitting viewing behavior information can be performed in home entertainment systems at any number of locations. The viewing behavior information is received from these locations at one or more central sites or clearinghouses, where it can be further processed and made available to any interested entities.
The present invention provides for a more accurate measurement and a greater variety of viewing behavior information. Advertisers can now specifically determine viewing statistics associated with advertisements rather than merely inferring advertisement viewing based on the number of viewers of particular television programs. The invention also enables advertisers to gauge the response of viewers to advertisements. Yet another benefit of the invention is the ability of advertisers to verify that advertisements have been broadcast as expected by local broadcasters. In particular, if viewing behavior information has been generated in response to a marker associated with an advertisement having been received at a home entertainment system, the advertiser can assume that the advertisement has been aired.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the detailed description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by the practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other objects and features of the present invention will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention as set forth hereinafter.